WHAT HAPPENED IN THE TUNNELS

We haven’t been told the whole story of Israel’s recent operations under Gaza

A photograph released this week by the IDF showing the entrance to a Hamas tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza, where the bodies of six Israeli hostages who had been executed were found. / Israel Defense Forces.

The current Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be blamed forever for its failure to protect the citizenry last October 7, despite receiving multiple specific intelligence warnings of Hamas’s planning for the cross-border attack. It will also be blamed for quickly undertaking the ongoing massive retaliation on all in Gaza, whether Hamas supporters or not, without some attempt to negotiate an immediate return of the 251 Israeli and foreign hostages that were seized by Hamas and other militant groups that day. 

Netanyahu’s early promise of a full inquiry into the intelligence failure has not happened, and most likely never will. A ceasefire agreement with Hamas, which has been avidly sought by President Joe Biden, has also failed to materialize.

Israel’s fanatical right-wing government will further be blamed for Netanyahu’s misreading of Hamas. With its extensive tunnel complex and its ability to withstand Israeli air and ground attacks, Hamas has essentially left the vast majority of the two million citizens of Gaza to fend for themselves. History will not be kind to Hamas or to the religious leadership of Israel, or to the consistent support of the Israeli response in Gaza by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for the White House.

So what happened sometime last week in a tunnel somewhere under Gaza? The initial Israel military account made no mention of the presence or the fate of Hamas guards. The New York Times reported Sunday, quoting Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, an Israel Defense Force spokesman, that the dead hostages were not found as a result of “a specific mission to release hostages.” 

That account was only partially accurate. The presence of any hostages in the tunnel was not known before an Israeli sapper team—a military unit composed of experts in demolition whose mission is to destroy Hamas tunnels—happened upon a reinforced door, blew it open, and found the bodies of six Israeli hostages (one of whom was the Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention last month) who had been executed by their Hamas guards. The IDF team had no idea that the hostages were being held there. The lack of information has been at the core of acute internal dissent between the Israeli military leadership and Netanyahu.